DESCRIPTION OP MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
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RHAMNACEiE. (Buckthorn Family.) 
Ceanothu8 Americanus, L. Red-root. New Jersey Tea. 
Shrubby plant, with stems 1-3° high from a dark-red root. 
Flowers in little umbell-like clusters, forming dense panicles 
at the summit of naked flower-branches. Calyx and pedicels 
colored like the petals. Calyx 5-lobed ; petals hooded. Fruit 
3-lobed, dry, splitting into three carpels when ripe. Dry 
woodlands, in siliceous soils, very abundant. FI. May -June. 
The root, collected in autumn. 
VITACEiE. (Vine Family.) 
Ampeiopsis quinquefolia, Michx. (Vitis quinquefolia, Lam.) 
Virginian Creeper. A common woody vine in rich 
ground, climbing high and extensively, attaching itself to 
the bark of trees by rootlets as well as disk-bearing ten- 
drils. Flowers resembling those of the grape ; leaves digitate, 
with 3-7 oblong-lanceolate, sparingly serrate leaves. FI. 
July, ripening the small blackish berries in October. Young 
branches and the bark. Resembling the poison-oak, whose 
leaves are 3-foliate, rhombic-ovate. 
SAPINDACEiE. (Soapberry Family.) 
Negundo aceroides, Moench. Box Elder. Ash-leayed Maple. 
Large, irregular branching tree, on wet lands. Flowers 
dioecious. Calyx minute, 4-5 cleft. Petals none. Sterile 
flowers in clusters, on capillary pedicels, the fertile in droop- 
ing racemes. Leaves pinnate, with 3-5 leaflets. FI. March- 
April. The bark. 
Aesculus glabra, Willd. Ohio Buckeye. Large tree with op- 
site digitate leaves ; leaflets serrate, straight- veined. Flowers 
in a terminal thyrsus or dense panicle, most of them with 
imperfect pistils and sterile; pedicels jointed. Stamens 
curved, longer than the pale yellow corolla of 4 upright 
petals. Fruit covered with prickles when young. Flowers 
small, not showy. The bark, which exhales an unpleasant 
odor, is collected in late season. FI. in May and is very 
